Electronic Health Records
A number of things have driven the growth in all aspects of the health care industry of computerized systems providing Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and Electronic Medical Records (EMRs). (The term “EHR system” is used herein to refer to computerized systems that store, maintain, and/or provide EHRs. In other contexts, the term may have different significance.) For example, governmental regulation continues to move towards impelling the adoption of EHR systems. In addition, EHR systems reduce the chances of loss of patient records and mistakes in data entry and make delivery of health care more efficient, thereby offering the prospects of improving patient care while lowering its cost. Further, EHR systems may help ease the burden of paperwork that now afflicts the delivery of health care.
An EHR system may record and aggregate any type of data associated with health care, including, e.g., data about patients, including, e.g., their names, addresses, insurance coverage and/or other financial arrangements, health conditions, allergies, procedures undergone, and/or tests performed. Other recorded data may relate to, among other things, health care providers, payers, pharmacies, and/or employers.
An EHR system may comprise facilities for creating graphs of data, including patient data.
Electronic data of any sort is often associated with other data that describes it, provides context for it, associates it with other data, and/or otherwise signifies the meaning, significance, and/or one or more other attributes of the electronic data. This accompanying data is often called “metadata.”
For example, in the medical field, an application may display the results of a blood test for cholesterol levels. The display may include data such as the levels of total cholesterol, HDLs, and LDLs, among other data. Some or all of this data may be associated with further data, such as the date of the test, the location where the blood sample was drawn, the identity of the laboratory (“lab”) that analyzed the sample, the identity of the patient, and the identity of the practitioner who ordered the test, and this further data can be considered metadata. The appropriate characterization of data sometimes depends on the ways in which it is treated in computerized files, applications, and/or systems.